E. Stanley Jones Had a Wife: The Life and Mission of Mabel Lossing Jones, 1878-1978 -- By: Kathryn Reese Hendershot

Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 22:2 (Spring 2008)
Article: E. Stanley Jones Had a Wife: The Life and Mission of Mabel Lossing Jones, 1878-1978
Author: Kathryn Reese Hendershot


E. Stanley Jones Had a Wife:
The Life and Mission of Mabel Lossing Jones, 1878-1978

Kathryn Reese Hendershot

KATHRYN REESE HENDERSHOT holds an earned Doctorate in Missiology from Asbury Theological Seminary as well as a Master’s in Theology and a Master’s in Counseling. She is the author of E. Stanley Jones Had A Wife and Life Lessons of a Desperate Housewife. Kathryn and her husband of forty-two years have three married children and five grandchildren. They reside in Nicholasville, Kentucky.

The recently released book of the same title (Scarecrow Press, 2007) is essentially the first biographical study of the extraordinary yet largely unheralded life of Mabel Lossing Jones, wife of the famed evangelist E. Stanley Jones. Mabel was an American pioneer in mission, education, and evangelism in the early to mid- 1900s, primarily in India. Here, she emerges out of the shadow of her celebrated husband as a multifaceted woman leader of the world Christian movement.

Upon her commissioning to India in 1904 by the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society (WFMS) of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Mabel served at the Khandwa Girls’ Orphanage and later trained teachers at the Lal Bagh School in Lucknow, India. After receiving her master’s degree from the Upper Iowa University, she was singled out in June of 1909 by the British colonial government to start a teacher training school in Hawa Bagh, which proved to be a sweeping success.

Then came a yearlong furlough followed by her return to India as a missionary for the Methodist Episcopal Church and marriage to E. Stanley Jones in 1911. The couple immediately proceeded to their assignment in the Sitapur District, which is where Mabel established her life’s work in what was to become the Mabel Jones Boys’ School.

Egalitarian faith

Mabel’s faith was the driving force behind her life choices and commitments. She viewed all people as morally equal, and, thus, dealt equitably with people from a wide variety of backgrounds. We find innumerable interactions with men, women, youth, boys and girls, Indians, the British, Americans, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, beggars, Indian officials, British officials, Methodist officials, missionaries, servants, educators, military personnel, the wealthy, the poor, the sick, the confused, the lonely, the lost, and those in crisis, all of whom were treated impartially. She lived out Paul’s proclamation in Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (NKJV). Mabel believed that the “promise of the Father”1 placed her on equal footing with...

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